A study on the welcome classroomsImmigration, inclusion, interculturality and the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language

Résumé

Immigration has socially and culturally transformed Spanish society, giving rise to a multicultural country, which represents an enormous wealth, but also challenges that must be faced with the utmost seriousness and rigor. Among the latter, that of offering an education under equal conditions to foreign students, especially to those who integrate educational centers with a linguistic handicap, since they usually encounter a series of barriers and added difficulties that complicate their schooling process. Thus, based on the existing needs of immigrant students with no knowledge of Spanish in Murcia, and given the urgency of adopting measures to facilitate the process of educational and, therefore, social inclusion in the host country, the main objective of this doctoral thesis is to analyze and learn about the organization and operation of the Welcome Classrooms in the Region of Murcia, which is a measure that has been adopted in the different autonomous communities of the country, to facilitate the learning of the vehicular language of the center to these students. For this, firstly, the general objective has been to analyze and learn about the organization and operation of the Welcome Classrooms in the Region of Murcia, and, secondly, and to achieve this objective, the following specific objectives have been set: To study the geographical distribution of the Welcome Classrooms and to know the profile of the foreign students; To know the specific training that the teachers of the Welcome Classroom have in the field of inclusive and intercultural education; To know the use of the methodologies that are carried out in the Welcome Classroom and in the Reference Classroom; To know the organization and functioning of the Welcome Classrooms; To analyze the valuation that teachers give to the Welcome Classrooms as a specific measure of attention to diversity; To listen to the voice of the students of the Welcome Classroom regarding their educational experience; and to know the identity of the students of the Welcome Classroom. On the one hand, in the first part of this study, a theoretical framework has been elaborated from a deep reading of the existing literature on the subject under study, which has allowed us to know the state of the question, as well as to elaborate the instrument (questionnaire) with which the collection of information has been carried out. This questionnaire has been addressed to 105 students, all of them immigrants with a language handicap, and to 201 teachers of the educational centers that have Welcome Classrooms in the Region of Murcia, and has been organized in blocks, each of which responded to a specific objective. On the other hand, in the second part, the empirical framework has been presented, including the methodology, the process of elaboration of the questionnaires and the field work, and the presentation of the results. Finally, the conclusions are presented, some of them are: the centers that have the Welcome Classrooms measure are concentrated, especially in rural areas; the students using this measure come from Ghana, Kazakhstan, Belgium, India, Algeria and Morocco, the latter being the most numerous, with 85.7% of the total; the teaching staff has very little training in the field of interculturality and inclusive education; there are no translation and interpretation services in the centers to facilitate communication with the student and his or her relatives; there is not much contact between the students in the welcome classroom and those in the reference classroom; there is general satisfaction with the measure on the part of the teachers; the teachers generally prefer that the students spend more time in the welcome classroom; there is some satisfaction with this measure, expressed by the students in the questionnaires, however, the lack of participation of the students in the reference classrooms is evident; etc.